The present invention relates to a telemedicine system for communication with remotely located patients, and more particularly but not exclusively to a system for remote communication of patient self administrated tests. Telemedicine systems provide an opportunity for home monitoring of post-operative patients, for preventative medicine where the burden on the health infrastructure of carrying out wide scale monitoring would be prohibitive, for reducing the time spent in hospital, for making patients more independent etc. Wherever there is a test that can be carried out automatically or manually self-administered by the patient, then telemedicine can be used to ensure that the results are obtained in a competent way and dealt with responsibly.
An example of an opportunity for telemedicine is in cases where symptoms show themselves in the respiratory system. A number of respiratory problems are preceded by detectable reductions in the ability to inhale or hold one's breath. Thus, it is possible to determine from a simple breathing test whether a patient is likely to suffer from such problems in the short term. Such a simple test is described in the literature in which the patient is placed in a rest position, asked to take a deep breath and then to count continuously until he has to take a breath again. An unusually short interval between breaths is indicative of congestion of the lungs or breathing passages.
The patient is generally not in the presence of a doctor at the times the test can yield the most helpful information, and indeed, the test is most useful as part of regular and frequent monitoring.
Furthermore the results of the test taken alone may not lead directly to any given diagnosis, the doctor preferring to take the test results in combination with other patient indicators before reaching a diagnosis of any kind.
Generally, automatic decision devices exist but are not widely used in the medical field since it is difficult to determine how decisions have been made and how different factors have been taken into account if at all.
An earlier patent application of the same inventor, WO IL00/00678, filed Oct. 25, 2000, which is hereby incorporated by reference, describes a system in which a plurality of tests can be administered remotely over a telemedicine system, the patient being given instructions to administer the tests and then the test results being considered together to produce recommendations.
The recommendations are then given either to the patient or to the doctor or both. A rule structure is used to lead from results to recommendations in a way that allows for easy checking by the responsible doctor and which avoids masking of bad test results by other better test results. The rule structure is however inadequate for certain given situations.
In the event that the same patient is being monitored by more than one doctor for different reasons or conditions, the above device requires either that the single monitoring device monitors everything and each doctor receives all of the information, or that two separate monitoring instances are used, increasing the inconvenience to the patient.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,772,586, filed on Feb. 4, 1997, entitled “a method for monitoring the heath of a patient”, teaches a method for monitoring a patient. However, with this patent the patient has to wire a medical testing device into a telephony network device, connected to a public telephony network, for transmitting medical (health) data.
Other patents relating to telemedicine include: U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,907,291; 5,906,208; 5,902,234; 5,897,493; 5,895,354; 5,892,570; 5,879,292; 5,873,369; 5,868,669; 5,868,135; 5,868,134; 5,865,733; 5,855,550; 5,848,975; 5,842,977; 5,842,975; 5,840,018; 5,827,180; 5,811,681; 5,791,908; 5,791,342; 5,769,074; 5,758,652; 5,677,979; 5,619,991.
There is thus a widely recognized need for, and it would be highly advantageous to have a telemedicine system which is devoid of the above limitations.